Wondering what to do with your old PCs?

[mycarsavw]

I think this belongs in here, if not, could someone move it to the correct forum please

I've just spent the last week dismantling old PCs, from Packard Bell's finest Cyrix equipped specials, to PIII (Coppermine) 600s. My initial plan was just to remove the HDDs and any useful bits and strip down and recycle what was left, but I couldn't bring myself to throw working hardware away. Instead I spent a lot of time searching here and Google for ideas on what to do with them and came up with the following;

Some months ago I built a Smoothwall (Welcome to Express 3.0! - SmoothWall.org) using one of the Coppermine CPUs, a 40Gb HDD, 360Mb RAM and two NICs. It's been running for almost 5 months and serves its purpose very well.

I used another Coppermine to make a carbon copy of the Smoothwall server (only this one has 2 4Gb HDDs and 192Mb RAM) and this now sits waiting to spring into action should the inevitable happen.

The next project was network storage: We currently have a Novell server with a 20Gb HDD which is really only used as a file server. Being a PIII (I think) it's the only weak link on our network and it really brings down the speed of things. I'd played with DSL (DSL information) in the past so gave that another shot for a few hours before realising I really needed something more suited to storage. I went for FreeNAS (FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home).

All the old machines were classic beige tower cases roughly the size and weight of a small child so they all had plenty of room to fit all sorts of junk in them. I started with one small HDD and a CD-ROM drive for the installation. Once the basic setup was completed, the CD-ROM drive came out and three more HDDs (all 4Gb) went in. Formatting, drive mounting and so on can be done over a WebGUI so there was no need for a GPU, keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Because they are going away in a cupboard, I added a few extra case fans to keep the heat down. I built two identical FreeNAS boxes and I'm using one to house software updates for the network, taking the strain off the ageing server and the other will be mirror of the server split up into documents, software etc.

Finally I wanted to attempt a new server. I taught myself basic servering on our current Novell box. I'll admit I don't know anywhere near enough but I've managed, somehow, to maintain it, trouble free, for almost 6 years. I'm a huge fan of Ubuntu (Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu) (and free stuff in general) so I went for Ubuntu Server (Gutsy Gibbon) (Ubuntu Server Edition | Ubuntu). I wanted a small file server for home use and another to cut my teeth on at work and hopefully convince those that need convincing (the partners) that Ubuntu is the way forward.

I used the beige towers again, added as much RAM as I could find (most of the old boxes had single strips of 32 / 64 or 128 Mb RAM and all the motherboards only recognise 128Mb per slot) and as many HDDs as would fit.

Installation was fairly simple due to the popularity of Ubuntu and the wealth of information out there. I used Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) LAMP Server Setup -- Ubuntu Geek as a reference and had the first server up and running in under an hour. My own server took a little longer as I managed to balls up the installation procedure three times

Once installed I removed the GPU, CD-ROM drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor, added more HDDs (preformatted using a GParted live CD (GParted -- LiveCD)) and I'm now getting to grips with what needs to be done to get them to do what I want them to do.

From a lot of old, outdated hardware I now have six "usable" machines. They're not cutting edge, and never will be, but I just couldn't bring myself to throw them away. I've learnt a lot on the way to making them - how satisfying it is to bork two motherboards in a row and still have 6 or so identical boards to try again with or how a PII 333 will overclock to 400mhz on air (it will go higher but it craps out quite badly at anything above 425mhz - I didn't care though, I had 8 more to try again with). I've also got a nice selection of dead HDDs which are currently being turned into a mobile (the hanging sort, not the phone sort) for my nephew.

The "beasts" I created;

Smoothwall 1 - PIII 600mhz, 40Gb HDD, 360Mb RAM, 2 x NICs
Smoothwall 2 (backup) - PIII 600mhz, 2 x 4Gb HDD, 192Mb RAM, 2 x NICs
FreeNAS 2 x PII 333mhz, 92Mb RAM, 4 x 4Gb HDD, NIC
Ubuntu Server 1 (home) - PII 333mhz, 384Mb RAM, 1 x 40Gb & 2 x 4Gb HDD, NIC
Ubuntu Server 2 (office) - PII 333mhz, 92Mb RAM, 2 x 4Gb HDD, NIC

All I have left is a stack of metal case carcasses, piles of PCI/AGP cards, motherboards, dead RAM sticks, PSUs, floppy drives (15) and CD-ROM drives (20) - and a lot of Ubuntu Server learning

[peterb]

There is quite a lot you can dio with older relatively low spec (by today's standards) machines and a Linux distro - particularly if you are happy running it in command line mode, as it seems to be the X server that uses up lots of resources. In particular it is a ideal for things like a firewall (smoothwall) a webserver, mailserver or file server, where you don't even need a monitor, mouse and keyboard connected as you can administer them remotely and securly via SSH.

[Disturbedguy]

Nice little..guide id call it.

I saw that smoothwall a while ago and seriously thought about looking at it, but space is kind of limited at home, but it is something I want to look at in the future.

How easy is it to setup and configure?

[mycarsavw]

There is quite a lot you can dio with older relatively low spec (by today's standards) machines and a Linux distro - particularly if you are happy running it in command line mode, as it seems to be the X server that uses up lots of resources. In particular it is a ideal for things like a firewall (smoothwall) a webserver, mailserver or file server, where you don't even need a monitor, mouse and keyboard connected as you can administer them remotely and securly via SSH.

I wasn't too comfortable with the command line initially, but now that I've played with it a bit and understand what does what, it's become a lot more simple. I'm also using a combination of PuTTY (PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client) and WinSCP (WinSCP :: Free SFTP and FTP client for Windows) to perform most of the maintenance/installations so as you say, making them all headless really is simple

Mailserver is next on the list

Nice little..guide id call it.

I saw that smoothwall a while ago and seriously thought about looking at it, but space is kind of limited at home, but it is something I want to look at in the future.

How easy is it to setup and configure?

Thanks.

Smoothwall works out of the box. If you print off the manuals (there's two, one simple, one more involved) and follow the steps thoroughly it's relatively easy to get working. I had some problems with permissions and making my router work but they were resolved on the Smoothwall forums (Index - community.smoothwall.org) within the day.

Go for it!

[peterb]

Yes, putty is pretty good. I run a Linux based web server with SSH access - the SSH port gets probed every day - record is 50,000 break in attempts over a 4 hour period - so be very careful that you have SSH configured correctly on the target machine (if it is exposed to the internet)

I have disabled password logins so you need a private key to login so I am using SSH for authentication as well as encryption. The only downside is that you need your private key to login. but you can keep that on a USB flashdrive (but protect it with a strong passphrase - and keep a backup of it as without it you will not be able to login remotely)

[kalniel]

I'm also using a combination of PuTTY (PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client) and WinSCP (WinSCP :: Free SFTP and FTP client for Windows) to perform most of the maintenance/installations so as you say, making them all headless really is simple

Why not stick with the Putty familiy and just use Pscp and Psftp?

[mycarsavw]

peterb thanks and noted

kalniel I started off using WinSCP to access the Smoothwall but got bored of the Terminal window not doing everything I wanted it to do (it kept locking up and it doesn't allow certain commands to be executed remotely) so moved to PuTTY more recently.

The more choice you give people the better imho

[DanceswithUnix]

A couple of hints:

1/ Denyhosts will see those script kiddies trying to brute force your passwords, any block them automatically. Very nice.

2/ I run X on my workstation PC (either Linux native or CygWin under Windows) and can then log into the server using "ssh -X <servername>". Now you can run all the GUI utilities, even if the server is in runlevel 3 and not actually running X locally.

I actually started running X no my firewall recently though, and installed MythTV on it. Allows me to have freeview programs on in the background without using up pixels on my main PC

[SiM]

Won't these cost more in electricity then they are worth?

[DanceswithUnix]

Won't these cost more in electricity then they are worth?

How much is a 24/7 server running worth to you?

Have run such a box for years, it gets the dregs of the family PC hardware optimised for low noise and heat (currently an old Socket754 A64). It holds the family email, records video and acts as a second line firewall after the ADSL router.

You do have a point though, I would never use a P4 for this task that would cost too much in running costs!

[amdavies]

I bought two P3s (both 1 Ghz) off of ebay for similar purposes, a Compaq SFF, which uses 50 watts an hour whilst idle and a generic mATX system that runs at around 60 watts an hour under the same conditions (no monitor included on either).
That works out at about 438kWh and 526 kWh respectively if they're running 24/7. You'll need to find out how much you pay per kWh and then you can work out a cost, a rough guess would be &#163;65 and &#163;80.